WASHINGTON – With Israel and Hamas returning to arms on Friday after the terror group ended a week-long lull in fighting across the Gaza Strip, the Jewish state is once again under international pressure to halt its war to wipe out jihadists that have brutally killed more than 1,200 people — including 33 Americans — on Oct. 7.
But how, exactly, can the Israel Defense Forces avoid harming civilians when its enemy is hiding behind innocent people, directing its operations from the most sacred of safe spaces – including hospitals – in violation of international rules of war?
“[Hamas’] The MO deliberately uses the public realm for the protection of their own human shields in the most cynical way,” said Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler of the IDF to reporters at the Israeli embassy in Washington this week.
“I can show you endless pictures and videos of how rockets are produced in schools, hosted in schools, fired from schools, mosques and homes. We have found rockets and bullets under girls’ beds and also in hospitals, unfortunately,” he added.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby highlighted Hamas’ lack of care for Palestinian civilians on Friday, noting that by refusing to release any more hostages, they are stopping humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
“The people who suffer the most because of that are the people of Gaza, the Palestinians,” he said. “So if Hamas really – as they claim – cares about the Palestinians, they will do what they can to come up with an exchangeable hostage list, so the aid can keep flowing.”
A Palestinian man inspects the damage after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip on Dec. 3, 2023. Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
An unfair fight
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday demanded that Israel not restart fighting until it creates a “clear plan” to avoid harming civilians – and threatened to withdraw support if it does not comply with “humanitarian law.”
But a few hours later, Hamas terrorists opened fire on a Jerusalem bus stop, killing three civilians and Blinken’s aspirant in one move.
Despite accusations that Israeli forces have caused the deaths of thousands of Gazans in the nearly two-month war, Shefler said the IDF is the “leading army in the world” at fighting in dense urban environments while minimizing civilian casualties.
A Palestinian boy cries after being taken to Nasser hospital after an airstrike on Dec. 3, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
“Over the years, we’ve built capabilities, first of all out of necessity, and more than that, because that’s what we believe in,” he said. “That in fighting a complex battle like this, we have to find the best way to defend our morals and values, and also to the Law of Armed Conflict.”
The problem, however, is that when only one side adheres to the standards of an international conflict – or cares about saving civilian lives at all – the law itself can be flawed.
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“It may be written in many ways [to support moral fighting], but it wasn’t written to deal with this kind of situation – dealing with a terrorist organization,” Shefler said. “That’s why we find ourselves in a very complicated space in a war zone with terrorist organizations embedded in all of this. [civilian] infrastructure and underground.”
Footage of the October 7 attack reviewed by The Post showed Hamas terrorists slaughtering children, beheading the dead and encouraging each other to “play with” the corpses.
Palestinians gather at the crater in Rafah after an Israeli attack on Gaza on Dec. 3, 2023. Photo by SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images
But the violence did not end there. Until the fighting was temporarily halted on November 24, Shefler said Hamas “fired over 10,500 rockets at civilians, schools, hospitals, at religious institutions” of Israel every day.
“They did everything they could with the aim of killing as many civilians as possible,” he said.
Reduces harm by taking risks
The terrorist group’s war crime strategy makes it almost impossible for Israel to defend itself without more casualties. But that doesn’t mean they don’t try to avoid losses.
“How does one deal with the terrorist infrastructure that is under the hospital? We could attack it from the air, but of course that has implications – and that’s why we chose not to,” Shefler said.
The military leader also detailed various other creative strategies used by the IDF to reduce harm to the people of Gaza – from the use of technology to more basic tactics – putting its own soldiers at greater risk for doing so.
An injured Palestinian woman was rushed to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
For example, the IDF has sent ground forces to clear Hamas hubs hidden in civilian infrastructure and underground – a strategy the Israeli army learned as a best practice from previous battles.
“Over the years, we have built our special forces to be able to carry out missions like this based on very accurate intelligence,” he said. “Going to very, very specific areas to find the weapons, the infrastructure that needs to be dismantled, sending these units with Arabic speakers, with medical teams, and that’s how we can [mitigate harm,]” he added.
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The IDF is also open to learning from other people’s experiences – and mistakes. For example, Shefler said Israeli leaders have daily contact with the US military, which has offered advice on close-quarters combat in urban environments learned from 20 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Israel has also used information sharing as a tactic in eradicating unwanted deaths. In the early days of the war, the IDF used leaflets to urge civilians to move south to safety ahead of an intended attack on Hamas in northern Gaza.
Since then, the Israeli military has launched a texting feature that gives civilians in the target area a short notice before an attack is carried out.
“In the beginning, the public didn’t listen to us leaving a house that we knew was a terrorist [when we told them] we were going to attack, but they learned to trust us,” Shefler said.
Now, Palestinians have learned to trust the IDF’s message so much that “you can find so many videos of Palestinians standing outside buildings that they have been told to leave, recording strikes from their own phones standing there because they know that we are going to hit.
An Israeli soldier in a tunnel under Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
“They also know now to trust when we ask them to move to a different area that they should listen to us, and we hope that is another level of mutual learning that is happening on how to deal with this truly catastrophic situation,” he added.
While the strategy has saved many lives, it has come at a cost to the IDF, Shefler said. For example, Israel gave advance notice to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza before its raid last month, which posed a danger to the army by providing potential leaders to terrorists hidden in the tunnels below.
“That’s a lot of threats to our forces without using a very important tool: military shock,” he said, adding that Israel had staged a coup by “notifying in advance that we were coming, and then going in and finding that all the infrastructure was there , not even a single person was injured – a civilian, a patient or a doctor in the area.”
Inside the hospital, the IDF found that Hamas had “trapped” a vehicle in the middle of the facility that was intended to “kill civilians and to kill soldiers who would come to the table,” Shefler said.
“If only we [launched a strike] from the air, then it will explode. But being on the ground, [we] allowed to dismantle it and not allow it to explode,” he said.
It’s another lesson learned from past experiences in unfair fights.
“A lot of times when we attack other buildings there are explosives and rockets in there that explode with it and create a lot of collateral damage by itself,” he said. “So we have to risk sending our troops there for a lot of things, risk them dealing with these bullets, with these stealth traps, with the potential of Hamas fighters jumping in from different shafts.”
Still, Shefler admits there is more Israel can do to prevent more civilians from becoming collateral damage. The IDF spent the week-long pause thinking about additional ways to reduce the danger, and continues to analyze past operations for lessons learned, he said.
“Can we do better? Always. Can we discuss and learn? Absolutely,” Shefler said. “Can we bring in other things that help the situation? Sure.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
